Sona Jorbateh to play on Madison world music festival

The
Gambian international kora player SonaJorbateh has been listed among line-up to
play on Madison world music festival.

This
year’s Madison World Music Festival, split between the Memorial Union and a
Willy Street Fair stage, brings in songwriters from Sweden, West Africa, and
Eastern Europe, among other locales. More so than in past years, the lineup
emphasizes artists who combine folk-music traditions with contemporary
instrumentation and production, like Cuba-born, Paris-based
multi-instrumentalist and vocalist Yaité Ramos Rodriguez’s project La Dame
Blanche.

Other
highlights this year include Puerto Rico band Orquesta El Macabeo’s punk-
andska-inflected Afro-Latin jazz and the masterful kora, a ‘21-stringed West
African instrument’ of Sona Jobarteh, who was born in London but hails from a
long line of Gambian griots.

Before
the actual music, the festival kicks off with a screening of the 2017
documentary Burkinabè Risingand the Art of Resistance in Burkina Faso.

Director
Iara Lee chronicles a community of artists that has flourished in the wake of
Burkina Faso’s 2014 revolution, during which mass protests ended autocrat
BlaiseCompaoré’s 27-year rule. Against the backdrop of a successful but
bruising struggle, the musicians and visual artists profiled in the film work
not just on their own projects, but also on rebuilding the country’s political
and cultural landscape through creativity.